When asked what he thought of the spitfires so popular with the Order of the Dragon, Sir Willard was reported to say, "Damned unmusical. Don't know how they stand to hear themselves work."

 — Anecdote widely circulated early in the reign of Chasia

Chapter Twenty-Two

Harric tried to stand, but his body had grown so stiff and sore from his recent exertion that he failed miserably, doubling back over in pain. Willard plucked his ragleaf from his mouth and extended it to him.

"Here. You've been roughed up pretty good."

Harric smoked till his mouth stung, and it quelled enough pain to get him back on his feet. When he glanced at Caris he saw softness in her eyes, but when he met her eyes she clenched her jaw and turned away.

Willard said, "How far to the mountain pass you spoke of, girl?"

"It's at the head of this valley."

Willard grunted. "We could reach it tonight, if we pushed."

"There's a fortification and gate in the pass," Caris said.

Harric found that funny. Even if he and Chacks or Remo had packed enough food for their expedition to their grove, they may well have faced a fort wall, too. He must have made an unseemly giggle, because the next thing he knew Willard plucked the ragleaf from his mouth and replaced it between his own teeth.

"You didn't mention a guarded fort, girl," said Willard. "How'd you get past when you came through?"

"It was unmanned in winter, but I suppose it's occupied in summer, to protect the harvest."

Willard frowned. "We might find the guards sympathetic to our cause, and we might not. Is there no other pass?"

"I don't think so. The mountains are awfully rough up there."

"Maybe we worry for nothing," said Brolli. "Night comes, and you camp near the pass while I scout it. Who know? Perhaps the gate is abandon and we worry for nothing."

"Unlikely," Willard said. "The fire-cone represents a lot of revenue for the queen."

The Kwendi grinned his feral grin. "Then I have a way we slip by." The mischievous twinkle in his eye was unmistakable. Harric guessed he planned to use magic to do it, and delivered the proposal like dropping a gauntlet before Willard.

Willard grunted and looked away, but Harric believed the old man knew exactly what the Kwendi was implying, and tacitly — hypocritically — approved. So, magic is okay if it benefits Willard, and he doesn't have to acknowledge it. Harric kept that thought to himself, but it might have leaked out in his look, for Willard avoided his glance.

"Very well," Willard said. "Stop us a mile from the place, girl."

* * *

Harric fell into a rhythmic trudge behind Idgit, staring at the trail and seeing only the next spot he'd place his feet. As the sun sank behind them, and his shadow lengthened before him, Harric slowly emerged from his trance, aware of a strange sound around him. At first he thought Caris might be humming or singing. Or perhaps Brolli was speaking in some pet voice to Spook beneath his blanket. It didn't seem to have a direction, or it seemed to come from near him, accompanied by a hollow kind of echo.

It was a voice. Female. Hysterical. It seemed beside him, a presence at his ear. He flinched, looking about, but saw nothing.

Little fool! You'll ruin everything!

He startled. The court accent and intonation were unmistakable. It was Mother. Warped and strange, but Mother.

Your destiny is nigh! The familiar, horrible wail that accompanied her worst visions seemed to erupt from the air beside him, setting him staggering to one side, eyes bolting from his head.

"Stop it..." he gasped. "Leave me alone..."

Another sound, a hissing and snarling, and she cried, Get away from me! I am last kin! It is my right! I have right of last kin!

Harric clapped his hands to his ears, but the sound merely erupted into a gabble of voices like crows. It ceased abruptly, leaving him panting, standing in the middle of the trail as if to face an enemy. Around him a soft breeze sighed through the branches, a distant fall of water chattered over stones, and the horses' hooves plodded heavily on the drum of the packed earth.

Was this what it had felt like for his mother, when her madness started...a gabble of voices in her head? The Sight had come to her at around this age. Had it begun as a trickle, like this, and grown to a mind-consuming torrent she couldn't control — visions of futures and possible futures slamming into her brain unbidden and torturing her nights?

Perhaps Sir Bannus had knocked something loose in his head and set the dike to leaking.

* * *

The trail climbed out of the forest up switchbacks along rock faces that stood like teeth along the jawbone of the ridge. From the edge of one switchback they glimpsed the low walls of a gatehouse in a gap between teeth. Caris found a grotto among boulders in which they made their camp. Harric found a nook between rocks that gave him some privacy from the others, and there he rolled up in his bedding and lay with his back to the camp.

Spook curled in the crook between his neck and shoulder, studying Harric's face with white glassy eyes. White eyes. Truly white, it seemed, opaque as porcelain, not merely seeming so in moonlight. Could it be the trait of an Iberg breed he'd never seen? He jabbed his fist in the air before Spook, who flinched as if it saw him clear as day.

"Sorry, Spook," he murmured, scratching the cat's ear with one hand. "Just trying to figure out those pearly eyes of yours." He couldn't decide if he thought they were pretty or ugly. Ugly, mostly.

He teased the witch-stone from his shirt, and held it close to keep it hidden from anyone who peered over the rocks at his back. Spook purred, watching intently.

The stone had depths that belied its dimensions. Light bent in unexpected ways within it, yet no reflection appeared across its surface. Rather it seemed the dim moonlight directly illuminated the vague depths beneath its surface. It was easy to imagine the stone in his hand was not a stone at all but a hole through which he peered into a misty, starless night. Shapes materialized and faded. His imagination could make them into anything, like shapes in clouds, but they also seemed slightly warped, as if viewed through a bottle.

Faintly at first, the voices returned. The merest hint of speech, fading in and out. No words discernible. Fear pulsed in his chest, but hope rose with it — hope that it might well be the witch-stone, not the madness in his blood, that brought the voices. But if it weren't madness, was it spirits he heard? Ghosts of the dead? Did the stone draw them, somehow? Could they hurt him?

He shuddered, and closed his hand around the stone to hide it from his eyes. Though the whispering had stopped, it was only the knowledge that his mother seemed to fear it that kept him from hurling it into the ravine below their trail.

Spook yawned, baring tiny sharp teeth.

A wave of exhaustion took Harric, and he slept.

* * *

He dreamt that he and Caris ran off to be married and become knights in the forest, but everywhere they went they were plagued by mosquitoes and sapphire-liveried grooms. Then he was alone with only Spook at his side, and the grooms found him, and surrounded him. He heard Lyla whimpering, and Mother Ganner crying "Run!"

Then a ring of dark-robed witches appeared between him and the grooms, black witch-stones in their hands. Together they chanted secret words and faded from sight: Nebecci, Bellana, Tryst. He didn't recognize the words, but in the dream he knew that the witch who tried to kill him in Gallows Ferry had spoken the very same syllables to become invisible.

Speak it! Speak it! the fading witches urged. Nebecci, Bellana, Tryst!

When the last witch vanished, Harric was alone again, and the leering grooms drew closer. They never reached him, but the dream repeated. Only Spook seemed slightly different in each dream — sitting in one, laying in the next — watching him intently with his plain milky eyes. 

*************************************

Thanks for reading!

-- If you liked this chapter, please tell a friend!

-- And let me know with a comment or vote.

-- Even if you didn't enjoy it, please let me know. That's how I improve! :)

* For JACK OF SOULS news , sign up for the newsletter at stephenmerlino.com. *